In this year’s dead heat presidential election, both candidates are vying for the Latino vote.

Last Tuesday, President Obama told Iowa’s Des Moines Register that his re-election rests in the hands of Latino voters.

Jonathan Perez is one of those voters. The 19-year-old will cast his first vote for Obama on Nov. 6., but two weeks ago, he found himself face-to-face with the contradictions of the Obama administration’s immigration positions when his cousin, Luis Hernandez*, 19 and undocumented, faced the threat of deportation.

“You hear about it, but you don’t expect it to happen to anyone in your family and someone you love,” Perez said.

The way this tension is resolved in individual voters might be critical to how many Latinos show up to the polls on Election Day, and how they vote. Most Latinos support the president, but doing so requires some mental gymnastics: the Obama administration has deported undocumented immigrants at a record level but also passed legislation that will allow undocumented youth a chance to stay in the country legally.